Don't worry!! We didn't die!!

Ryan drove the car today! And no, we didn't die. Although I wondered a couple of times...

We have rented a car to get us to the airport tomorrow. It's nice, lots of space, and hopefully it will get us to the airport on time. We are getting up at 4am tomorrow, packing the car, driving to the airport for 6am, and flying out at 9am. With the time difference, and the 8 hour flight, we only arrive in Ontario at noon. It's going to be a long long day!!

We're just finishing some packing, but I thought I'd better stop and let you know that Ryan didn't kill us, at least not yet. We still have tomorrow morning!! :)

(Ryan, please don't get mad that I posted this - I still love you!!)

Christmas Season

You know Christmas is just around the corner when you start getting loads of cards. We have already received a few from home (thank you to those who sent - yes, grandma we got your card!) British people are crazy about christmas cards. They don't have candy canes, but they have cards coming out the wazoo. I have received a card from almost all of my students, most of the teacher, and a pile of students that I don't even know!! Everyday we hand out arm fulls of cards to students. It's verging on rediculous.

We have our Christmas (oops, sorry) I mean, winter Party tomorrow. Turns out that one of the parents wrote into the local paper COMPLAINING that we were calling it a "Winter Party" and not a Christmas party. Usually it's the other way around! I have my PPA tomorrow, so I am missing it, but I'm hoping the kids have a good time! You're probably wondering which nincompoop scheduled the party for the same day as PPA. Yeah, that would be me. Actually, it's because I had ANOTHER observation today. I'm sick of being picked at! I don't know yet what was said about me, and I'm not really looking forward to finding out. The real question should be "what nincompoop schedules an observation for the third last day before christmas break???" I had one of my kids leave the class before he even got in it, because I knew he wouldn't handle the activity.

We had a video this morning, so I am all caught up on my marking...Spy Kids 2 just wasn't holding my attention!! Now I get to go navigate the mall because I forgot that we needed a secret santa gift. Ah, I love Christmas!

5 more days!!!!!

Ancient Egypt

We went to the museum today. I should clarify, I went to the museum with a bunch of crazy kids. It's bad enough that the trip is right near the holidays, and the kids are off their rockers, but to top it off, we had a really long bus ride there, and an even longer bus ride back. It is about an hour and a half to London and I had a few who were bus-sick. The driver was really jerky, so even I wasn't feeling too hot!

The museum was amazing. It was an incredible building with so much to see and do. We only took the kids to a fraction of what they had to offer, and Ryan and I will most definitely have to go back!! I kept being asked, "Miss, is this a REAL mummy?" Like they could believe that what they have been learning about is actually real! They were convinced that they were all fake, and made up to trick them into thinking Ancient Egypt existed. I had only one really bad kid, who has subsequently lost his privilages for the rest of the term. It was rather embarassing to have to yell at a kid who is running away from you, in a very crowded place. He was throwing temper tantrums and crying and running away for most of the day. Then when I held his arm, he cried that I was twisting and hurting it, and that I needed to let go. As soon as I let go, he would run off and have another hissy fit. At the end of the day I had a nice chat with his mom about his behaviour and told her he would be missing the video that they were supposed to have tomorrow. Sucks to be him. Actually, sucks to be me, cause I will most likely have to stay behind and babysit him.

I put some pictures up on myspace. Some of them are fuzzy, but you get the idea!

Ikea Goodness!

Ryan and I decided that we need to get out more. Regardless of the fact that we have little money, and even less time, and are both tired from the work week, we wanted to make the most of our time here. So this week our big plan was to visit Ikea. It is located near the huge shopping centre we sometimes go to, and we decided that the train was a much faster method of travel. We bought tickets from Romford Station to Chaffard Hundred (which confused me, because last time we were there we could not buy tickets from Romford to Chaffard Hundred, but we can buy them going in the opposite direction? Weird.) When we got to Ikea (after navigating the station, the busy parking lot, and a major road) we were surprised to find that it wasn't all that busy. We spent the afternoon browsing, and we even found the kitchen of our dreams for our someday-house. After a quick bite in the Ikea cafe, we headed to the shopping centre. It was so crowded!! We didn't stay long!! We hopped back on the train and got home really quick! I'm starting to love the train! It was a great day. I think that Ikea will be a repeat outing! It's easy to go to Ikea and not buy when we know that we won't be bringing it home in the long run. Ryan will really have to watch out when we get back home and have a real house to buy for!! :)

Canadian Humour

I probably only think this is funny because I am Canadian...

Last night over dinner I was thumbing through the Romford Post (kind of like the Northern Life - a few local interest stories and lots and lots of ads). At the end of a very long article on the importance of winter car maintanance, there was a little blip. Hardly worth noticing. I probably wouldn't have noticed, except I actually made it all the way through the article. At the end was a TRUE FACT.

True Fact:
In Scandenavia and Canada drivers often have two sets of wheels for their cars. One outfitted with tyres for the summer driving months, and another set outfitted for the winter driving months.

Ok, now that I wrote that, it's not nearly as funny as I thought and hoped it would be. Believe me, I had a nice laugh about it yesterday.

Speaking of weather, it hailed today. The kids were outside playing and suddenly it started to thunder. The sky turned instantly from a beautiful blue to a menacing black, and it started to pour and hail. Everyone was so excited. It's the closest thing we have to snow so far. It has been double digit temperatures all week! Gotta love the jet stream.

Oh, one more thing. If you are interested in seeing our pictures in all their magnificent glory, I have started a msn myspace. Blogger was giving me a hard time about publishing pics, so I am posting folders in their entirety. Please enjoy at your leisure. The address is: http://mrshuisjes.spaces.live.com. I am slowly getting pics up there, please be patient!!

I have it blocked so that only people I know can see. If you are someone I know, and you can't get on, let me know and I will arrange something. Ok, that's it for now!

Dickensian Christmas Festival

Ryan, Megan and I went to Rochester yesterday for the Dickensian Christmas Festival. Rochester is a historic town whose claim to fame is Charles Dickens. They have museums and lots of themed events. This Christmas festival is the kick off for the season, and tons of people came out. The event was interesting, they had "actors" or volunteers dressed in traditional victorian dress, and they were roaming the streets ready for a photo-op or just running an event. There were also readings and shows throughout the town. They had different areas, one was a stage where there was a concert band and a choir sang, they had a huge craft fair, a smallish amusement park (mid-way like) for the kids, plus all of the regular shops were open. We arrived at about 10:30am, and by the time we went into a few shops and stopped for lunch, it was time for the main parade down main street. All of the performers paraded down (as a chance for everyone to see them I guess). After that parade, Ryan and I were ready to go home!! Only 5 more hours before the tour bus heads back!! We did find things to do. We heard the choir sing. There was one boy in the choir who was clearly not impressed with being dressed up and displayed to hundreds of people. We walked through the craft fair. There were so many people that we didn't actually get a chance to SEE all of the booths, but I am confident that they were just as interesting as the one's we did see. We spent about an hour in the town cathedral. We listened to the choir practice (the acoustics are phenomenal) and someone was playing the organ. I wasn't feeling great still, so while I had a rest Ryan wandered around the building and out into the court yard. They did have a little cemetary, with tombstones so old they didn't have any writing left on them. There were a few we could read that dated back to the early 1800's. We had a really nice lunch/dinner at an italian place, and then waited for the end of the day parade to start. It was a really beautiful candle lit parade, which ended at the ampitheatre for a group carol sing. There must have been a thousand people packed into a very small space! I couldn't sing, but it sure did sound nice. They also had a "snow fall". I put that in brackets because it was man made, and also, it wasn't snow. Rather than blowing potato flakes or paper or whatever they might usually use, they blew bubbles! It resulted in a VERY realistic snowfall, except it didn't melt when it hit people or the ground. But watching it in the air, I would have sworn that it was a real snowfall! It was at least 10 degrees, so I knew it couldn't possibly have really been snowing! It was funny to listen to the kids though, some of whom have probably never seen a real snowfall. They were running around trying to catch the snowflakes, and some teenagers tried to have a 'snowball fight', but that didn't work out so well!

We even got home at a decent hour! It was a pretty great day. A really nice start to the Christmas season!